WHY BUSH MUST GO: A Bishop's Faith-Based Challenge

Somewhere in the pages of this slim volume lurks the skeleton of a thoughtful and provocative book. The author, a retired Episcopal bishop, mixes autobiographical reflections with smatterings of paleontology, archeology, physics and biblical scholarship to make the case for a "global warming of the second kind," a renewal based on the principles of nonviolence and the unity of all life. While this poorly titled book does include a heated indictment of the current administration's policies in Iraq and elsewhere, Sims seems much more interested in making a case for a new social order. He is both chastened and hopeful about the possibility of environmental revitalization and world peace based on maturing human consciousness and feminist principles. The book is marred by periodic outbursts of tortured syntax and jargon. In his distress with environmental degradation and world events, Sims sometimes yields to the temptation to use epithets instead of ideas, as when he attacks "male-dominant fundamentalist sectors" of several world religions, examines the "dominator grip of the levers of control in America," and claims that the apostle Paul was converted from "Jewish rule-oriented rage." Readers sympathetic to Sims's alienation from the Bush administration and to his eclectic mix of religious philosophies may find encouragement and inspiration here. However, even they will have to be extremely persistent. (June)